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In the old days, people that engaged with your content may have landed on your site, and then disappeared forever. Not anymore. Re-targeting lists now allow you to build audiences of people that have engaged with your content in the past, and this allows you to launch hyper-targeted campaigns to those same people when the time comes.

But, what are the advantages of this form of advertising?

Imagine that you are standing on a street corner for a full week handing out flyers to a new restaurant. Some of the people passing by may totally ignore you. Others, on the other hand, will stop, take a flyer, glance at it, and walk off.

Now, let’s imagine that at the end of the week you could re-target ONLY the people that took the flyers in the first place. Wouldn’t that increase your chances of turning prospects into customers? Such is the age-old marketing concept of re-targeting – following up with the people that have already expressed interest in what you have to say. This marketing strategy has been used for centuries (if not millenniums) already.

Re-Targeting In The Digital Age

The internet, believe it or not, has dramatically increased the potential to re-target your audience.

Ad networks like Facebook and Adroll allow you to harness the power of re-targeting by using something called pixels. Pixels are fired into a web surfer’s cookie box when they click on specific links, or land on specific pages.

Let’s look at an example:

If you’re a Social Media Manager and you share an article with your audience about vacationing in Rome. Facebook gives you a pixel (available in your Facebook Ads Account) to be placed on your Rome Article’s web page. Every user that lands on the Rome article page gets your pixel hidden in his/her cookie box.

Re-targeting lists also allow you to go back into your Ads Manager whenever you like, and send out promotions or messages specifically to those new audiences.

For example: if you want to monetize the audience that read your Rome article, you can hit them up with a promotion for a special trip package to Rome. Maybe even something that looks like this:

Re-Engaging Your Audience via Banner Ads or News Feeds

With the Facebook Ads Manager, you can remind them of your existence on their news feeds, or on the right-hand column of their browsers whenever they’re on Facebook.

But, how about the rest of the web? With services like the Google Display Network, and Adroll, you can actually re-engage your audience via banner ads across 98% of the world wide web.

Here’s an example of some banner ad placements:

Let’s go back to that Rome article you shared. If 3,000 people visited your Rome article, then your pixel is safely placed in their cookie box, and you can now send them banner ads whether they’re on CNN, Bloomberg, the New York Times, Fast Company, or almost anywhere else on the web. This helps build trust for your brand at a fraction of a cost of what it once cost. Incredible, right? As these web surfers are browsing their favorite sites they will see banner ads that you have specifically designed to entice them to return to your site. If they click on your banner ad, you can re-direct them to a landing page which reminds them of the benefits of your service, and allows them to make that purchasing decision they forgot to make the first time they visited you.

Clkim Takes It One Step Further

With the Clkim dashboard, you can create re-marketing lists without even having your own website.

Say, for example, that you discover an awesome article on The Huffington Post which reinforces your brand message and you want to share it in a group. When you use Clkim to shorten that link and make it look more elegant, you can also attach the Adroll, Facebook, or Google Re-Marketing pixels to your shortened Clkim link.

By doing so, you can ensure that anyone that clicks on your shared content will be added to a re-targeting list. Next time you want to launch an ultra-targeted campaign, that re-marketing list will already be filled with people that are interested in what you have to say, thereby making your promotions that much more effective.

Check out Clkim’s Features for more information on how to keep your audience engaged, and monetize your traffic. By organizing your links, and keeping tabs on engagement, you can increase your online marketing ROI in no time.